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The Spectator's Notes

Charles Moore

The Spectator’s Notes | 2 June 2007

The grammar school row is proving not so much a Clause Four moment as a class war moment for the Tories — now it has produced a resignation. It is suggested that David Cameron’s Old Etonians are indifferent to those struggling to better themselves, because they do not know what struggle means. The Cameronites imply

Any other business

Global Warning

Not hell, but drunkenness, is other people. This insight was vouchsafed me in the London Underground the other evening. I had just passed a notice from the Mayor of London warning passengers to be careful after a few drinks. In the previous year, it said, two people had been killed and hundreds injured after a

The young generation prefers to face life with their gloves off

I studied with interest the recent photo of Prince William and Prince Harry attending a military occasion in mufti. For officers in the Foot Guards and the Household Cavalry, the sartorial drill is, or used to be, strict. Here is my report on the two young men. Bowlers: all right but nothing spectacular. Harry’s better

How ‘Bid ’em Up Bruce’ became yesterday’s man

When Lazard presented its results at the start of May, you might have expected the investment bank’s smooth-talking chairman Bruce Wasserstein to have been in upbeat mood. After all, Wasserstein trades on his reputation as the greatest mergers and acquisitions banker of all time. Lazard likes to think of itself as the finest M&A house

What if it rains on Beijing’s Olympic parade?

No official visit to China’s capital is complete these days without paying homage at a large and rather shabby building in the sprawling northern suburb of Haidian. The Beijing Olympic Tower is the nerve-centre of a seven-year, $48 billion project that has the potential to define China’s rapid ascent to economic superpowerdom — or to